


Keep Calm And Curbstomp HYDRA

by tielan



Series: Keep Calm And... [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Maria Hill, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 14:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4266000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maria Hill is not known as a people person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Calm And Curbstomp HYDRA

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rmc28](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmc28/gifts).



On the first day after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, Maria Hill checks on her people.

She’s not entirely sure they’ll admit her into the hospital where Rogers is in recovery after being picked out of the Potomac. After all, in the eyes of most S.H.I.E.L.D personnel she vanished after Fury got shot and not everyone knows that she walked into the Triskelion backing up Captain America.

But it looks like Romanoff has instigated a ‘permitted personnel’ list and Maria’s on it.

So she gets a look at the battered and bruised not-corpse of Steve Rogers, and the man slumbering in the chair beside him.

Who isn’t so slumbering after all since he cracks an eye as she pauses in the door. “Hey.”

“Wilson. How is he?”

“Doc came by a while ago – said it was a wonder he was alive and if he wakes in pain it serves him right for surviving.” Wilson shakes his head. “He always like that?”

“The Doc? Or Rogers?”

The grin is swift and easy – a real charmer’s grin. She has to admire Rogers’ ability to find cohorts willing to join him in his crusades. Then again, that’s part of what made him Captain America in the first place, and given that Maria walked into the Triskelion at his back she can’t really talk.

“Given his past recovery records, he’ll be awake within twenty-four hours, and a pain in the ass patient for another forty-eight.”

“Okay,” Wilson laughs, “so that’s him sorted. Romanoff says she’s fine. How you doing?”

“Fine.” Maria shrugs, absently studying the man in the bed. The focus that burns in him while waking is gone in sleep, and he looks...peaceful. Then she realises Wilson is actually waiting for a more in-depth answer from her. “Getting ready to dig in for the storm, actually.”

–

On the second day after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, Maria makes a press statement on behalf of the organisation formerly known as S.H.I.E.L.D.

Someone needs to do it, and the World Security Council is gone, Fury is considered ‘dead’, and Natasha Romanoff is ‘just’ an operative when all is said and done.

So Maria gives the news cycles twenty-four hours to spin themselves out. It has the added advantage of allowing her to decide which journalists might be worth cultivating and which ones she should shoot down with extreme prejudice.

Her redirected inbox is full of mails – regional directors asking what to do now, who’s in charge, how should they protect their people. Maria ignores most of them. They got the briefing she sent out the night before it all went down: _Go to Plan M_. If they don’t have it in them to follow Plan M, then God help them and the people in their care.

Maria can only help as much as she can help.

As it is, that’s rather less than she’d like to, given that everyone wants a piece of the downed intelligence agency.

Right now, she figures she can help by drawing fire. It will give people time to get under cover before the vultures get them. The only question left is how much of her will be left standing afterwards.

But she answers questions, cool and apparently unruffled, and doesn’t flinch at the accusations levelled at her, Nick Fury, and the others who protected a world that sees only the heroics, not the mechanics behind them.

And then there’s The Question.

“Ms. Hill, how do we know that _you’re_ not HYDRA?”

“An excellent question, Ms. Everhart.” And amusing enough that she allows a little smile. “You don’t. You can’t. If I _am_ HYDRA then my loyalties are buried deep – deeper than Captain America and the Black Widow could find. If I’m not...” She shrugs and lets her audience take that as they will. “You can’t prove a negative.”

–

On the third day after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, she goes back to her apartment for some small personal items, and is sprung by two members of the former Strike Operations.

Maria’s no Steve Rogers, but she can hold her own in a fight. And, too, she was expecting something like this and came prepared for a fight that _wouldn’t_ rouse the neighbours. In spite of her fondness for the weapon, Maria feels guns in civilian life create more problems than they’re worth most of the time. However, the ‘icer’ developed by Coulson’s scientists does a very effective job of putting people down without anyone calling the cops.

The buzz-wand Jack Rollins gets in her ribs stings like hell, though.

Just for that, Maria stuns Rollins a second time. It won’t hurt him, but he’ll be out a little longer than his buddy. She never liked him anyway. Strike Operations – with a few exceptions – was mostly guys who thought their dick and their shooting skills made them God.

Then she takes a breath, leaning against the wall and arguing with her body about what she can do versus what’s left to do.

_Get moving, you haven’t got all day._

She starts by microchipping both of them in the butt with a tagger originally made for chipping animals.

Maria considers that appropriate.

Then she goes into her apartment, leaving them in the hallway. It’s been ransacked of course, a small and petty disregard. Not that she left anything work-related at homewhen she went on the lam; no, the things she came back for are personal: her favourite mug, her favourite silk scarf, the family photo album she still hasn’t found the time to digitise, and her grandmother’s necklace of old beaten gold.

Maria’s accustomed to travelling light.

–

On the fourth day after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, Maria has a job interview with Stark Industries and meets the formidable Pepper Potts for the first time.

“You’d think we’d have crossed paths more often,” Pepper comments as she looks over Maria’s qualifications, sent up to her by the Stark Industries HR Department which swiftly – and sensibly – realised that Maria was way beyond their payscale to hire and fire.

“Fury prefers dealing personally with Stark,” Maria says. “I suspect it’s an ego thing.”

Pepper snorts. “They’re men. Isn’t it always?” She folds her hands on the desk. “However, I can’t employ you, Lieutenant Hill.”

“Ms. Hill,” Maria corrects, choosing not to point out that her rank was ‘commander’. “S.H.I.E.L.D’s gone, so I have no rank. And why can’t you employ me?”

“Because I have nowhere for someone of your skills to go. Unless you’d like my position, which you’ll understand I’m somewhat reluctant to concede.”

She figures the better part of tact is not telling Pepper she’d rather face an elevator full of HYDRA agents than be CEO of Stark Industries. “Actually,” she says after a moment, “I was considering working with the Avengers Initiative.”

Pepper’s eyes widen. She sits back in her chair, folds her hands on the desk, and smiles. “I like it. Tell me more.”

–

On the fifth day after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, Maria has to deal with Colonel Talbot.

She’s met plenty of military men in her time at S.H.I.E.L.D and before. A couple were heroes, some were good men, and most were average. And then there were those who were a stain on the shirts of military men everywhere.

“Isn’t there that saying, ‘pride goes before a fall’?” He intones conversationally, leaning across the table into Maria’s space in an attempt to intimidate her

She flicks her gaze up to look him in the eye, then stares straight through his chest pocket with a bored expression. “Did you want my intel on S.H.I.E.L.D’s bases, Colonel, or did you want to gloat?”

“I don’t see why I can’t do both.” But he has the brains to see that if he gloats, she won’t give him the intel he wants, which means he’d have to go back to his political masters empty-handed. Which, as a rule, military men are wary of doing. Political masters only understand ‘strategic importance’ as relates to their own standing.

Getting down to tin tacks, she gives him two minor bases and one major – Fury’s secret base up in Canada. Which turns out to be a miscalculation since it seems that such a small thing as the US Army having no jurisdiction in Canada isn’t going to stop Talbot and whoever’s backing him.

Her consolation is that, knowing Fury, he’s left enough nasty surprises that anyone who goes looking for that base will have a hard time of it.

–

On the sixth day after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, Maria attends Fury’s funeral.

There aren’t too many people present; most S.H.I.E.L.D agents are either busy or unwilling to make targets of themselves – either to the media or to HYDRA.

The eulogies are brief and for some reason _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_ doesn’t operate when the dead man in question is Nick Fury. People have as many snide things to say about Fury as they do good.

Maria opts not to say anything at all. This is partly because she had her differences with Fury, but he respected them and she feels she should accord him the same dignity, and partly because she’s not sure she could stand up there without rolling her eyes at all the people smugly certain that Fury’s out of the way.

Even if she didn’t know he was alive, she knows that the man was born with more twists than a Rubix cube. Joining S.H.I.E.L.D and rising through the ranks simply meant he added a few extra dimensions – and possibly an alternate universe or two – in there.

As it turns out, the absent agents are quite wise in staying out of the limelight. Having learned from their last attempt, this time there are two Strike operatives falling in behind her and two more waiting for her at her car.

“You should have stayed down like a good girl,” says Rollins, fingering the buzz-wand as he looms over her.

Maria plants her feet and sighs. “I never liked you, Jack, even before I realised you were so damn stupid.”

He blinks. She doesn’t. And then Rollins’ three cohorts go down like the Triskelion’s spires, and Rollins gets a ‘brainshock’ arrow in the forehead.

“Oh,” Maria says as he slumps back against the car, the buzz-wand falling from his limp fingers, “and Barton sends his love.”

–

On the seventh day after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, Maria finds herself in an argument with Steve Rogers.

“You shouldn’t have gone in without backup.”

“I had backup,” Maria points out. “It just wasn’t visible. They wouldn’t have come for me if I’d had visible backup.”

For someone who fell out of a burning helicarrier a week ago, Rogers looks very well-recovered. Then again, he _is_ a supersoldier. One with a major self-sacrificial streak – to say nothing of being overprotective of people who he’s not responsible for.

“Do you know how close—?”

“Yes,” she interrupts him. “I know. Just as you knew exactly how close you were to going down with that helicarrier last week when you ordered me to fire on you. Which I did, by the way, because the mission was more important.”

He’s not an idiot. Just stubborn. “This wasn’t important.”

Maria sighs. “Look, Rogers, now that S.H.I.E.L.D’s down, there are a lot of people scrambling for cover. Mostly our people, although, yes, some will be HYDRA agents trying to hide in the chaos. And I owe it to them to give them as much cover as I can – whether by taking out HYDRA cells where I find them, or passing the information to people who can do the job. So, yes, it was important.”

He looks at Natasha and Barton, both of whom know better than to do anything more than shrug. Hell, even Wilson knows better than to do anything more than shrug when Rogers glances his way.

Irritated by the lack of support, he frowns at her. “You don’t have to be responsible for everyone, Maria.”

Which is _rich_ coming from him.

“I’m their superior officer – the only one visibly living. That means I’m responsible. And,” Maria adds, when he opens his mouth to claim that she’s not – as though he’s allowed take the weight of the world on his shoulders and she’s not, “HYDRA needed to learn that S.H.I.E.L.D may be down, but this bitch still has teeth.”

–

On the eighth day after S.H.I.E.L.D goes down, Maria Hill keeps on keeping on.


End file.
